re: Where The Wild Things Are
Oct. 17th, 2009 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonsheen...well, that was a charming discourse on anger management!
Which is to say I think it captured the spirit of the original book really friggin' well.
This really was made more for adults than kids. It was slow and not a lot happened, but I think that actually really worked given the source material was all of ten lines. I liked that it was more a psychological treatment than anything else, and it plays up the concept of the monsters representing aspects of Max and his circumstance. Some of them are facets of Max's emotional state (Caroll, the monster he most relates to at first, being of course the representation of Anger and Fear of Change) while others represent his present relations (K.W. clearly being his love and anxiety about losing his mother and sister as things change in their lives). For the most part though it IS a movie about anger. Uncontrollable, destructive, anger born of deep anxieties and how how if you're not careful you can destroy the things you very much wish to keep in spite of how much you really love them. Which...makes it a pretty tense film as you really actually worry if he will actually come home to find supper still warm. I can see how this would scare the hell out of kids. It's a pretty dark subject matter; visually gorgeous but very sparse. Again, slowly paced, not a lot of outright off the wall actions, though SOMEONE on the production team had fun throwing those fursuits at eachother. The use of suits helped a lot: you really got a sense of contact when these huge big scary things crashed into one another.
(I also liked that the Wild Things really did look Wild as much as they looked human in other scenes, again it worked coming from the approach that they were basically FROM Max. And so represent the human and inhuman about all the things he was dealing with. Creatures who are sweet and funny in one scene become genuinely menacing the very next. Or sometimes even the same scene. It's really effective.)
Also: "Please don't go. We'll eat you up, we love you so." ...I have to admit that line was used in a way that I didn't expect it to be used but I nearly bawled.
So yeah, all and all, I liked it. I can see how you might not but I think for an adaptation I came in really really skeptical of it stayed VERY true to what the original.
Which is to say I think it captured the spirit of the original book really friggin' well.
This really was made more for adults than kids. It was slow and not a lot happened, but I think that actually really worked given the source material was all of ten lines. I liked that it was more a psychological treatment than anything else, and it plays up the concept of the monsters representing aspects of Max and his circumstance. Some of them are facets of Max's emotional state (Caroll, the monster he most relates to at first, being of course the representation of Anger and Fear of Change) while others represent his present relations (K.W. clearly being his love and anxiety about losing his mother and sister as things change in their lives). For the most part though it IS a movie about anger. Uncontrollable, destructive, anger born of deep anxieties and how how if you're not careful you can destroy the things you very much wish to keep in spite of how much you really love them. Which...makes it a pretty tense film as you really actually worry if he will actually come home to find supper still warm. I can see how this would scare the hell out of kids. It's a pretty dark subject matter; visually gorgeous but very sparse. Again, slowly paced, not a lot of outright off the wall actions, though SOMEONE on the production team had fun throwing those fursuits at eachother. The use of suits helped a lot: you really got a sense of contact when these huge big scary things crashed into one another.
(I also liked that the Wild Things really did look Wild as much as they looked human in other scenes, again it worked coming from the approach that they were basically FROM Max. And so represent the human and inhuman about all the things he was dealing with. Creatures who are sweet and funny in one scene become genuinely menacing the very next. Or sometimes even the same scene. It's really effective.)
Also: "Please don't go. We'll eat you up, we love you so." ...I have to admit that line was used in a way that I didn't expect it to be used but I nearly bawled.
So yeah, all and all, I liked it. I can see how you might not but I think for an adaptation I came in really really skeptical of it stayed VERY true to what the original.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-18 08:14 pm (UTC)I'm so happy they stuck with the fursuits and puppet work instead of going full-CG. I'm especially happy that they kept this a sensitive story about anger, not a "chilern's romp in a fantasy land".